my favorite white boy is not who i thought he was

can male celebrities get woman’d?

If you scrolled on TikTok or Twitter these past few weeks, you have probably seen that clip of Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal, Eddie Redmayne, and Denzel Washington on the Graham Norton Show. To the ones who missed it, here’s what happened: Eddie was telling the story of how he was taught to use a phone as a weapon while training for his role as an assassin in The Day of the Jackal. Paul, in response, started this rant about the realism of someone using their phone to defend themselves. He said jokingly, “Who’s actually going to think about that? If someone attacks me, I’m not going to go, phone.” The men of the group started laughing about the absurdity of it all. Until Saoirse brought them back to reality by saying, "That's what girls have to think about all the time."

Milliseconds later, they all (men) went pale. I have to admit it was funny to see how quickly their smiles were erased. With just one comment, Saoirse shut them all up, and you can see in their faces how much they regret being so nonchalant. These men forgot they were being filmed and got caught being dudes in 4K. Bless their publicist.

What happened after was… interesting. The clip went viral on social media, not so much for its content. The great transgression wasn’t the comment itself. It was who said it. Beloved Paul Mescal, the same one who wears Clairo merch hoodies, said something so out of character that the internet had no other choice but to go crazy.

Some women felt sad that Paul had said something so ignorant. Others were happy he was showing his “true colors.”

I watched it all unfold on my phone screen, thinking: Was the comment really that bad for people to react this way? What is really all the fuss about?

The rise and fall of beloved white famous boys is a phenomenon I’ve witnessed more times than I would like to admit. To understand why this happens, we need to start by talking about why the internet’s obsession with white young male celebrities is so fragile.

My theory is that people get tired of celebrities' exposure— the more we see of them, the faster we get bored. In male celebrities' case, it is only a matter of time before they do something to break the fantasy of being the ideal man. Our obsession with celebrities is sustained by an illusion. They’re supposed to be the most beautiful and perfect creatures to ever exist. They must be perfect all the time to be desirable. That means no display of human behavior and absolutely no fuck-ups. Apply this notion to Paul Mescal’s situation, and it’s crystal clear why women were so let down.

this is just one of the dozens tweets i saw sharing the same sentiment

Paul has been every girl’s favorite white boy since he starred as Connell Waldron on Normal People. His next roles (also about sensitive men displaying complex emotions) helped build this idea that in real life he is also sensitive. I mean, he has a roman nose, wears micro shorts, listens to Mitski and has dated Phoebe Bridgers. What else do you need to be the internet’s manic pixie dream boy?

If we look into it deeper, Paul’s appeal works not only on women but on men too. In today’s age, it is not enough for celebrities to be attractive; they must have charisma, and Paul has both. Elle Magazine wrote about him recently, saying, “A rugby fan and former player of Gaelic football, Mescal walks a line of both stereotypical male and female fantasies.” This held true until he came and shattered the fantasy by behaving like the typical guy.

Now, what illusion was he breaking? Did he actually do something out of character?

We (I include myself on this because I am guilty too) have this idea of who Paul is based on what we have seen in interviews, red carpets, and the work he has done, not really knowing anything about who he really is. In Ariana Grande’s words, we saw his potential without seeing credentials. We invented him.

Can we blame him for not being who we thought he was?

I was speaking to my good friend Amanda! about this, and she has a pretty good theory on why this happens. Let’s read what she has to say.

Amanda: I think I can consider myself a “White Boy of the Month” expert by now, as my job allows me to be chronically online (lol) and in touch with all the latest trends and the latest... men. And what really intrigues me is that ever since this trend was created, a pattern always repeats itself: 

Phase 1: Praise for a movie or TV show.

Phase 2: One TikTok edit with millions of likes.

Phase 3: Resurgense of old tweets/drama.

Phase 4: White Boy Jail.

And in there, he’s forgotten and lost in time and in space. And we’re all here, waiting for a new white boy bombshell to enter the villa. 

These men (WBOTM) are built to have an expiry date. As if they weren’t human, and as if the only purpose of their existence was to appeal to a certain audience. Sure, these men can be very talented; they can be multifaceted artists, but they’re only seen as objects, made to provoke the reaction of “Oh my God, I need him!” every time they come on screen. And that’s exactly what (polemic) showrunner Ryan Murphy had in mind when he cast the young Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Lyle Menendez in his (unfortunately) hit Netflix show “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”.

I won’t even elaborate on how wrong this show was or how the script was fucked up and unnecessary, so let’s just focus on this. Nicholas has already entered the phase two of our “White Boy Jail” plan. He’s surely on his way to phase three. And, if Nicholas does end up in WBJ (White Boy Jail), like many others, what will come next? I’ll tell you in a minute. Let’s discuss this first:

As Luisa wrote in the first part of this piece, it’s obvious that we, the internet, see these perfectly curated men as objects to fit our mold of what “The ideal man” should be like: Strong, sensitive, sweet, listens to Mitski and cries because he thinks that it’s unfair that women should suffer with menstrual cramps… So, when an old tweet comes, or when he has an attitude that breaks our fantasy, he’ll no longer be casted in roles, because he’s no longer “The ideal man”. And if he does get roles, he’ll no longer be seen as what they call “The internet’s boyfriend”, an almost royal title, that comes with the privilege of being constantly seen in TikTok edits and Pinterest boards. That’s when his Cameo era starts. 

When he’s getting more “Cameo roles” than he’s getting… regular movie/TV roles, that’s when you know his “peak era” turned into something that is long gone. 

Rip, bro. I hope you enjoyed your month. 

That’s CELEBRITY CULTURE 101 for you. 

And my take on this whole thing is: ARE WE HEARING OURSELVES!? I, as a ‘White Boy of the Month (WBOTM)’ expert, am very aware of my reality + my REAL experiences with men, (read) and I know that these are totally different things. These men aren’t the characters they play on TV. Hell, they’re not even the characters that they created for themselves to fit into a mold that a society that’s obsessed with labeling things with ‘core’ created. These are real people, and we should never hold them up to a certain standard that we created for them when we don’t even know them personally. 

These men are accessible to you. They’re on your phone screen, on your TV, they’re everywhere! But a reminder that these men didn’t necessarily sign up for WBOTM duties when they signed their contracts to be in a certain TV show or movie. Of course, I’m not talking about previous White Boy of the Month dudes who have been rightfully cancelled; I’m talking about these poor men who are living off of Cameo just because fans found out he had a girlfriend or just because he reminded everyone that he was, you know, a dude. 

Final word: Celebrities will always be celebrities. They’re people who can fuck up, yes, but they’re not thinking about their WBOTM castle crumbling down when they’re going through with their lives. They’re thinking about, I don’t know, eating a burger. Sleeping. They’re never thinking about eventually doing Cameo because one day they reminded someone that they’re human. And that person didn’t like that. 

The one and only “White boy of the month”, or “The internet’s boyfriend” is… you know… just a man. 

He’s just a man. 

Grace Baron also wrote about this for Now that’s a thought. In her piece, she discusses how a lot of the comments she saw online were about what the cardigan Paul was wearing when he made that comment. She argues,

“The attack on Paul Mescal’s less traditionally masculine item of clothing feels dangerous in itself. I appreciate that some people are saying that it’s ironic that wearing a more feminine, he still failed to think of the woman’s experience. But is it?... We currently have a generation of male celebrities, heterosexual presenting ones, who are much more comfortable flexing the gender presentation of their clothes... Is it a PR move or self-expression. I don’t know, but I feel we don’t want to lose it. What do we gain from losing it?... It feels like when a presumed ’soft’ man on the internet makes a mistake, we are quick to spurn him.”

Coming back to my main argument, my biggest issue with the internet’s reaction was that Paul has never self-proclaimed to be a women’s rights activist. So, why are we holding him to such standards?

When this unfolded online, I tried finding a term to define when male celebrities got woman’d. But I couldn’t find any. If you haven’t heard of the term before, being woman’d is a term created by Rayne Fisher-Quann to explain when a female celebrity is “sentenced to death in the court of public opinion for the crime of being too visible, too successful, too proud, not good enough at performing humility or coolness or whatever new mode of womanhood is enforceable that week.”

Another interesting point I found while researching how this happens is that male celebrities can get woman’d (or whatever the male equivalent to it is) by who they are in proximity with—if they start dating a woman not liked by their fans, then the appeal wears off.

Paul’s online popularity has been in decline since he started dating singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams. For reasons I find both laughable and ridiculous, the internet hates her, so Paul dating a woman deemed unworthy (according to Stan and Film Twitter) doesn’t help his case and proves he is no longer worthy of our attention. All he had to do to shatter the illusion of the perfect guy was date someone who didn’t match the made-up character of him the internet created and make an ignorant comment on a show.

The same thing happened to Timothée Chalamet when he started dating Kylie Jenner. I must admit, I am guilty as well. The minute I saw him with Kylie, something shifted in my brain. I found him less attractive by associating himself with someone I don’t like.

Another example that comes to mind is the internet’s reluctancy to accept Jacob Elordi staying for so long with Olivia Jade.

These three men have something in common; they were all WBOTM in their respective times, and they all have ended in White Boy Jail for one reason or another. Some longer than others, but it all leads to fans being disappointed that their favorite white boy didn’t act how they had imagined.

Women online have convinced themselves that the girlfriends of their favorite WBOTM do not match the persona they have created in their minds. And when they do end up staying with women they deem unworhty for more than a couple of weeks, they get angry. But why wouldn’t these men like them? They are beautiful, rich, and coincidentally nepo babies, which means they have lots of cultural capital to share with their partners. There is nothing about them that makes them undesirable. At least not on paper.

White men, being the most privileged group in our society, face little to no repercussions for their wrongdoings (real or exaggerated), so their online hatred will never equate to anything that other populations go through. Still, it is interesting how quickly our perspective of celebrities can change as soon as they act outside of the box where we contain them. In her essay about female celebrities getting woman’d, Rayne wrote, “Many women with large audiences have begun to explicitly stress to their followers that they’re imperfect, flawed, and don’t wish to be idolized. They know, consciously or not, that their dehumanisation as women doesn’t begin when they inevitably falter from the pedestal they’ve been placed on — it begins when the pedestal is built in the first place.”

Going back to my question, can male celebrities get woman’d? I doubt it.¹ Given that Paul Mescal’s first big-budget movie is being released worldwide soon and people seem excited to see it, and that there was a Paul Mescal lookalike contest in Dublin recently, I am confident in saying that his time in White Boy Jail is coming to an end, if it hasn’t already.

So, where do we go from here?

My take is that we should all care less about celebrities. They are regular people, for the love of god! Sure, there are differences between us: tax brackets, access to every possible substance you can imagine, connections, etc. But at the end of the day, they are humans. They fuck up, are self-involved and forget to read the room. I don’t believe what Paul said was harm-intending, but as Saoirse said, it did open the door to have conversations about how women tend to be the ones who teach men about human decency and highlight the struggles we go through. Men need to step up and outside themselves. There is so much danger that women face daily that they have no idea about, and who is going talk about it if not us?²

This situation has opened my eyes to the way I talk and think about celebrities. The illusion that I used to have has been wearing off for a couple of years now. I don’t care about celebrities the way I used to. I don’t expect anything from them, and trust me, it is liberating. I urge you to do the same. Drop the expectations, stop building pedestals for people you have never met, let the illusion wear off, and focus on more important things.

Be free.

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Hi lovelies!

If you made it all through, you are a real one.

I’ve been thinking a lot this past few weeks and I thought I'd share how I’ve been feeling with you.

First, even though I love writing pop culture analyses, I am aware that these “issues” most of us write about are not as big as we make them to be. The regular person is not obsessed with celebrities and pop culture. Most people are out there living in the real world, which is why sometimes writing these feels like I’m speaking to an echo chamber. Especially on weeks like this one, where more urgent issues take over the media. As they should!

I still write, and I still publish them because I do find the benefit in discussing a subject that, although it doesn’t affect millions, it affects at least thousands. And, because I believe we deserve to have fun writing about not-so-important issues. (Not to dismiss how crazy some people act towards celebrities.) Also, writing with someone like Amanda and having these conversations with her made it way more fun. I love her and her writing and you should check Certified. if you still haven’t done it.

Second, I feel both hopeful and hopeless about the state of our world. We are witnessing violence like never before and it is debilitating. I wake up every day worried that I will die and will not have time enough to do everything I want. I am ashamed of and scared for my generation. I am tired of the hatred, the senselessness, the apathy, and the selfishness. I go to sleep tired and wake up the other to find out I didn’t get any rest. To make it worse, when I wake up, the first thing I do is scroll on social media to watch videos of kids dismembered, to see the numbers of dead Palestinians rise, and to read that another populist far-right politician came into power.

This is not normal. Our brains are not equipped to handle this much gravity in such a short period of time. It feels like I’m going crazier every day.

Having said all that, human beings, especially people of color, women, the LGBT community and people living on the global south, have and will always endure tiranny. Nothing has ever been handed to us. We have had to fight with fists and teeth for every right we have. Our normal state is to resist against the machine. So, to those of you who feel like this is the end of the world: don’t despair. Taking away our hope is how they win. We cannot accept their terms. And we won’t.

As always, I’d love to read what you think or how you feel in the comments.

I love you all very much and I can’t thank you enough for reading me. Take care.

Luisa xxx

1. Think about men like Johnny Deep and Chris Brown. They are abusers; they have been found liable of violence towards women, and yet they have held their positions in the industry and kept the GP support. Violent men, rapists, and abusers are worshipped even after displays of violence. Let’s not forget that these are not only male; they are white. There is very little they can do to fuck up their careers.

2. This is not to say that we have the task of enlightening men. Yet, if we don’t have these conversations with them there is very little that they can do to learn. They must hear it from the victims. What they do with that information is not our bussiness.